


To Be A Good Host

by Certified Valve Charger (Interrobam)



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Culture, Aphrodisiacs, Bondage, Decadence, Dehumanization, Forced Orgasm, Heat Simulator, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Mild Emeto, Mild Gore, Multi, Non-Sticky Sexual Interfacing, Objectification, Parasites, Parasitic Eggs, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Prewar Cybertron, Prewar Senate, Public Humiliation, Public Rape, Rape, Sex Toys, Sexual Sadism, Sexual Torture, Sexual Violence, Tactile Sexual Interfacing, Third Party Observer, the Functionists were real fucked up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:09:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5269178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Interrobam/pseuds/Certified%20Valve%20Charger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>" “Our guest," Senator Proteus began, gesturing at the small orange mecha bound to the slab, "is a mecha who seems to relish making my job difficult. His processor is irrecoverably glitched, I fear, and he is quite fond of harboring parasites. Aren’t you Rung?” The mech’s optics darted towards the senator’s face, but he made no reply except a shuddering exvent. “Perhaps a demonstration of the damage such pests can wreak on a functioning system will lead him to reconsider?” "</p><p>Senator Proteus and his esteemed guests try their best to teach Rung a lesson in loyalty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be A Good Host

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the warnings y'all. In case the tags hadn’t clued you in, this fic contains an explicit scene of non-consensual and violent sexual activity. While characters in the fic, and even the narrative framing, may depict this in an ambiguous or even positive way, I want to make clear that it is never acceptable for someone to sexually exploit another person. Whether it happens in person, online, or through any other medium, whether the perpetrator uses force, coercion, deception, guilt, or any other means of exploitation, it is wrong. There is not and will never be a "good reason" for someone to sexually touch another person, or expose them to sexual material, without having been given explicit, informed, continuous consent. Chances are you already realize this, but I personally feel it is important to reiterate at the beginning of fics like this.

The music wafting through the penthouse had a hard and heavy beat, though it could hardly be heard over the sound of chattering voices and bubbling laughter. The crowd of revelers was primarily made up of the scientific class, but intellectuals, artisans, and even some of the altmode exempt mingled together. Several senators, including the owner of the penthouse, were also present. The only mechen that were not high caste were a scattered handful of guards, standing stoically against the walls in wait in case an uninvited guest appeared or heavy lifting was required. Despite the late hour the revelers showed no sign of tiring of sipping high grade and gossiping about recent events, art exhibitions, new datapads both educational and fanciful, absent friends. There was no particular reason for this party, no new regulations successfully passed or anniversaries reached, but rarely did the residents of Translucentica Heights feel the need to _justify_ a party. 

Gearcut shifted from one pede to the next. He wasn’t used to this kind of scene. This was his first time covering what his boss liked to call “an event.” He was used to cleaning up Dead End scum, making sure the jailing quotas were met, collecting fugitives, wrecking private property to make his employer’s points for them. Not standing around listening to shiny high castes making nice and debating the fine points of taxonomy. The most exciting thing to happen yet had been a messenger drone coming in with a datapad for one of the Senators. Even that had been nothing special, Gearcut had only stood at his post and watched as more experienced muscle checked it over to make sure it was legitimate. Still, it paid well, it was low risk, and his buddies had reliably informed him that sometimes the host would let you pick off some of the remaining high grade for yourself. As long as nothing drastic happened, the night should be smooth sailing. Gearcut exvented and leaned back against the wall, careful not to scrape the expensive polished silver plating, and tried to look serious instead of bored.

That was, of course, when something drastic decided to happen.

The host of the soiree, a Senator by the designation of Proteus, pushed through the crowd rather brusquely, a datapad in his shaking hands. He spotted Gearcut’s boss and closed in on him, whispered angry words and made a sharp gesture. His boss signaled for Gearcut and two other guards to come over. By the time the heavy had managed to make his way through the guests-- carefully, without scraping any finishes or knocking askew any cube-- Proteus was already hissing orders to two of the most senior guards.

“-don’t care if you have to scrape him out of the back of a Dead End alleyway, you find him and you _bring him to me_ as soon as possible. _Drag_ the thing if you must.” 

“Understood, Sir,” the guards chorused. The boss relayed some addresses as the Senator fidgeted in agitation, and the pair excused themselves and headed for the elevator.

“Gearcut,” his boss called. The mecha in question straightened to attention.

“Sir?”

“Accompany the Senator until he sees fit to dismiss you. He may need assistance.”

“Sir,” Gearcut confirmed, trying to hide his displeasure at being assigned guardian duty under a mask of professionalism. His boss excused himself, probably to complete another task for their host.

Senator Proteus was clearly still agitated. He fiddled with his datapad and exvented hard, field radiating anger. He muttered glyphs which the heavy couldn’t catch but which held unmistakable tinges of contempt. Whatever had happened was really scuffing his paint, and Gearcut hovered warily just in reach of him. 

The senator did not calm down enough to rejoin his guests until half an hour later, when the boss came up to him and whispered something into his audial. Whatever he said was evidently good news, as Proteus nodded and allowed himself to smile. He told Gearcut to stay where he was, as he had to inform his guests of a new development. Gearcut watched as Proteus travelled to the far side of the penthouse. The senator called out something about “surprise guests” and “new entertainment” in a joking tone. Judging by the applause, and a few hoots and whistles that followed, the crowd had none of the trouble Gearcut did with understanding what he was getting at. 

After a few minutes things seemed to be back to normal. Mechen were chatting and mingling just as before, and Gearcut settled back into a practiced air of seriousness and pretended not to mind that his new post was in a rather awkward spot at the mouth of the fuel storage room.

\---

Almost an hour later, while he was ignoring the service drone struggling to maneuver a tray of high grade around his hulking frame, the elevator’s doors reopened and the two senior guards stepped in. A few mechen glanced their way, but none showed sustained interest. The boss rushed to talk with them, then to alert Proteus, who came out of the crowd with a vicious smile and gestured for Gearcut to join them at the other corner of the room. Sensing the senator’s impatientness, Gearcut hurried over.

As the heavy approached he could see that one of the senior guards seemed to be dragging something behind them. When he came closer it became clear that said thing was a _he_ , a little orange mech. The larger bot had him by the ankle and was unceremoniously dragging him from the elevator over to the corner where Senator Proteus was waiting.

"This is the one?" the guard asked, giving one last hard yank to the mecha's leg and then reaching down to shove the small frame into the center of the ring of mechen. He nudged the mecha’s helm towards the Senator with his pede. 

“Nice of you to join us, Doctor,” Proteus said, his voice shaking with barely hidden anger and excitement. The mecha in question uncrumpled himself from the floor shakily. His optics were unfocused with the confused fog of a prematurely aborted defrag cycle. He tried to stand, stumbled, thought better of it and settled for sitting up and squinting at the mechen around him. Upon closer inspection, the mecha was... incredibly _strange_ looking. Gearcut couldn’t make out his alt: no wheels or treads, no wings or thrusters. He didn’t seem to be a scientific instrument, at least not one with which the heavy was familiar. Despite a seemingly functional frame, his lack of kibble made him appear foreign and misshapen, and Gearcut’s tanks turned. He had never seen a monoformer before. He’d heard of them, mechen who tore out their cogs and mutilated themselves to remove all trace of kibble. But the little mecha had none of the weldscars such extensive surgery would leave, and Gearcut couldn’t figure out where his kibble _would_ be, had he any. Gearcut briefly thought that he could be a droid, but even muddled from recharge the mech was too canny to be a sparkless machine. He had to turn into _something_.

Proteus held out a datapad, and the doctor seemed to startle as it came into range of his field, as if he couldn’t make out what the object was until it was directly before his optics. “Care to explain this?” Proteus continued, offering the datapad. The orange mecha sent one last searching look around himself before taking the pad and squinting at it’s screen. He stiffened visibly, inventing. He raised his servo to scroll down, flipping through several data sectors.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself, Rung?" the senator asked, his agitation building back up as he watched the mecha-- Rung apparently-- read through the information. The small mecha kept his gaze steady on the glowing surface of the datapad. Despite his tensed actuators, his face did not betray any glimmer of emotion, and his field stayed tight. " _Well_?" Proteus growled.

"I don't know what this is," Rung answered, his voice steady and calm, offering the datapad back. 

The senator moved fast, faster than Gearcut would expect from a bureaucrat who spent most of the cycle on his aft, and fist connected to faceplates with a sickening crunch. Rung's helm whipped around on his neck. Destabilized, he fell to his side on the floor, groaned pitifully. Proteus bent down and slammed his hand down onto Rung's neck, denting metal with a stark screech. He lifted him effortlessly before slamming his back into the wall. It was not that the senator was strong so much as that Rung was so very slight, his pedes dangling helplessly below him. He tried to vocalise, but static bursts and strained whistles were all that arose from his mouth. Gearcut glanced at his boss. This kind of roughing up was what _they_ had been hired to do. He asked over private comm if he should take over. His boss shook his helm. This was different. This was personal.

"You don't know? _You don't **know**_?" the senator roared in the face of the smaller mech, whose hands were tight around his wrist but who did not bother to kick against the air with his pedes. More garbled static and a spurt of energon emerged from between the mecha's dentae. "You ungrateful little _glitch_ ," Proteus muttered, running his free hand up the mecha's leg, shoving his fingers into the pelvic joint hard enough to bend plating. Yeah, Gearcut thought to himself, this was _definitely_ personal. The smaller mech grunted in pain, optics flickering as the senator scraped his fingers against sensitive wiring before removing them. He pressed against the bot's thoracic plating, trying to force his fingers between the gaps, but the fit was too tight and he had to make do with groping beneath his gardbrace.

"You functionless piece of _slag_ ,” Proteus hissed, voice low. “We treat you well, don't we? We could have _killed_ you. It wouldn't have been _easy_ , you're a durable little turboroach, but it was _possible_. Instead, we let you live.” A particularly deep thrust of his fingers under the gardbrace, hard enough to sever wires judging by the noise Rung emitted. “More than that we gave you fuel, a place to recharge, an opportunity to serve your planet, and when you had satisfactorily earned it we _let you go_ , let you keep up your little practice. And _this_ is how you repay us?" The senator shook his head bitterly, stepped back and released the mecha, who slid down the wall with a trickle of energon and a hiss of static. Rung twitched, tried after a moment to get up on his hands and knees. The senator swung his pede hard against the other mech's abdomen, eliciting another cry of pain. Rung curled in on himself then, servos lacing behind his helm and face tucked downwards for protection, legs folded against his torso, spinal strut bent inwards. He tried to make himself as small and tight as possible. 

"Did you think we weren't going to _**find out**_?" The senator howled at the clenched frame. The mecha vented raggedly, antennae twitching.

"I-” his voice fizzled into static, he reset his voxcoder and began again. “I don't know what you're talking about," he said, his voice strained but still steady. Proteus vented, pressed servo to forehelm

"Pry this _thing_ open for me," he snapped.

"Open, Sir?" Gearcut asked, making a motion to mimic twisting and rending.

"Pull his arms and legs back" the senator clarified, which was honestly a bit of a disappointment, but at least it was better than just standing around. Gearcut stepped over the fallen mecha and bent down. He seized wrists in one hand, ankles in another, and pulled them apart. There was the scrape of resistance-- the mecha was probably trying to lock his joints-- but it was nothing Gearcut couldn't override with brute strength. After a minute of work he had him fully exposed again. The doctor whimpered, optics offline. The senator simply stared down at him for a second, then kneeled on the ground, placed a hand against the small mecha's sparkplate in the mockery of a lover’s embrace. Rung bucked in an attempt to avoid contact, but Gearcut barely had to compensate for it, and the little mecha settled when his first attempt proved fruitless.

"Rung. We _both_ know you're lying to me,” Senator Proteus said. “If you want to even _begin_ redeeming yourself, we’re going to need you to tell the truth. It's clear that you were indiscreet with certain pieces of information. We need to know _everything_ you told them, and _everyone_ you told it to." Rung vented raggedly, twitched servos and pedes. 

"Do you think they'll protect you?" Proteus lowered his voice, which took on a spiteful and pitying tone. "Do you think they aren't somewhere in The Institute at this very moment telling us everything? You had Senator Shockwave to help you for a while, but he's _gone now_ Rung." Rung let out a noise, it sounded like a sob. "Tell us what you've done and this can be over. Tell us and we'll let you go. We're going to lock you up again, of course, but that’s going to happen no matter what you say or do. But, if you cooperate…” Proteus trailed off, his voice came back smooth and almost seductive. “If you cooperate we'll give you a _nice_ cell this time, with a big berth and datapads to read. We'll let you keep your glasses." Rung's whimpers quieted into a weakened buzz, he bowed his head. The senator raised his hand to lift up his chin, gazing into his offlined optics.

"If you tell us something _really_ good," Proteus purred, "if you tell us something that will help us find the pests that evaded capture this time... I can even tell the guards not to _touch_ you." Rung flinched, but the senator’s hand lingered on his chin, thumb wiping at oral lubricant mixed with energon. Rung onlined his optics, they were dull and weak but they met the senator’s all the same.

"I don't know what's going on,” he rasped. “I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know _anything_." 

Proteus exvented with a snarl.

"Rung, I'm going to give you _one more chance_ to-"

"Get _scrapped_ ," the mecha growled, more dark and low than Gearcut would have thought him capable, optics once more bright with defiance. “I tell you _**nothing**_.” 

The senator roared in frustration and slammed his fist into the already damaged faceplates of the smaller mech. Before the doctor could recover he aimed his next blow to his neck, then to his sparkport, which cracked but did not shatter, and finally his abdominal plating. Rung cried out as each hit found its mark, struggling with renewed fervour. Proteus landed a final blow to his face and Rung’s yelp was colored with the damp tone of fuel and oral lubricant that had dribbled into the wrong sector of his intake. The senator straightened up, wiped energon from his knuckles and sneered at the doctor.

"Now the problem becomes how, exactly, I can communicate to you how utterly _worthless_ you are.” His voice was still fierce, but delivering a beating seemed to have calmed him enough to regain some of his composure. “You and your _ilk_ are nothing but a drain. A parasite to the senate, to society, to the cybertronian race as a whole." The senator glanced down to his pedes and exvented. “Perhaps you've gotten to used to being around your betters. Perhaps all this time you’ve been permitted to spend with functional, real mechen-- more than that _important_ mechen, mechen whose altforms are key to our race’s continued existence-- has given you the delusion that you are one of us. That you get to decide things for yourself. You think you belong in a place like this? You think you belong with us?” Rung did not respond, offlined his optics once more. 

“I suppose you must be taught a lesson,” the senator muttered, lifting his helm to glance at Gearcut. “I’ll need you to fetch some things for me.”

\---

When Gearcut returned with the case Proteus had instructed him to retrieve from his second apartment in eastern Iacon, the small orange mech had been laid out on an ornate iron slab. His ankles and wrists had been bound, one to each leg of the table, the mesh cordage had been tightly knotted and then welded in place for extra security. A mech with a microscope alt was at his helm, jauntily tipping high grade into his mouth. The doctor sputtered against the fuel, spilling more down his face and into his ventilation system than managed to enter his intake. The microscope squealed and chastised him for wasting such rare and expensive engex. Other guests were joking with one another, reaching out to pinch and stroke the mech’s plating and laughing when he twitched away. A racecar was rubbing his hands against his sparkport as if attempting to polish it.

“Ah, lovely, everything’s here!” Senator Proteus called, raising a container of highgrade as Gearcut moved through the crowd.

“The items you requested Sir,” he said, presenting the case to the Senator. 

“Excellent,” the mecha grinned, gesturing absently for a service drone. “Get the mecha a _Bread and Circus_ , would you?”

“Very generous of you Sir,” Gearcut said, not bothering to hide his delight as the drone hovered over the crowd to offer him a cube.

“We haven’t managed to get him to open up to us yet,” Proteus explained, sorting through the box and putting aside a flash drive. “So we’ll just have to force it.” He took out a mechanism with a dial and a magnetic base, placing it just over the doctor’s sparkport and turning it sharply. A jolt of electromagnetic energy pulsed from the device and the mecha’s interface cover snapped back immediately. Rung twitched, jerked his arms against his bonds in an instinctive attempt to cover his array. The gathered mechen giggled, then quieted as Senator Proteus gestured for silence

“Our guest, here, is a mecha who seems to relish making my job _difficult_. His processor is irrecoverably _glitched_ , I fear, and he has trouble with what _should be_ very simple concepts. Not biting the hand that fuels him, for example. In addition, he is _quite_ fond of harboring parasites. Aren’t you Rung?” The mech’s optics darted towards the senator’s face, but he made no reply except a shuddering exvent. Proteus raised his helm and gestured at one of the guests, a scientific class mecha with a broad grin, who nodded and moved away from the crowd. “Perhaps a demonstration of the damage such pests can wreak on a functioning system will lead him to reconsider. But first, let us insure that Rung here will be a _gracious_ host.” Proteus reached for the flash drive he had previously discarded. The thing was too small to be a living memory stick, Gearcut pegged it as an inert drone, a fragtoy. Upon closer inspection he could recognise the model as a heat simulator, largely thanks to the garish glyphs painted unsubtly down its side. He had never used one himself, but they were a staple of pornvids and more or less ubiquitous in locales where interfacing services were sold. It seemed a lot nicer than the ones he’d seen before, because of course in Translucentia even the _interfacing_ had to be luxury. Proteus managed to insert it into one of Rung’s universal ports after a few tries, a second later a small red light turned on and he hummed irritation.

“Stubborn little _turboroach_ , you still can’t admit to yourself that we know what’s best for you, can you?” he muttered, glaring down at the doctor, who defiantly averted his optics and kept his vents even. “Lucky that we can put your guard down _for_ you.” 

Proteus pulled out a second flash drive, this one from his own personal subspace. It looked just as sleek as the previous one, but Gearcut could tell it wasn’t a commercial model. There were no glyphs to explain its function, but he plugged it in with confidence that suggested total faith in whatever program it contained. At first, nothing happened. Then the usb began to beep, a red light at its top blinking on and off. Rung’s frame tensed, his vents became shallow and irregular. The unlabeled drive let out a final chirp as the light turned green and Proteus reached down, unplugged and then reinserted the heat simulator. This time the light shifted from red to green within seconds, signaling the program’s activation. Rung offlined his optics as his fans came clattering to life.

“There we are,” Proteus said. “Now, while our guest is being prepared allow me to turn your attentions to Flatwarp, over by the Dispenser. She has a _diverting_ little project to explain to everyone.”

Gearcut wanted to stay and watch the show, but his job was tailing Proteus, so he left the table and followed the rest of the guests over to the other side of the room. The grinning scientist Proteus had signalled earlier was waiting, hunched over a covered tray. The mecha, Gearcut guessed she was the “Flatwarp” the senator had mentioned, was already passionately chattering away.

“-been studying the neurocircuitry of lesser cybertronian lifeforms for _centuries_. So of course I began practical work immediately once I had established-” 

Gearcut realised, with a mix of disappointment and irritation, that he had drained his cube. As the mecha over the tray continued to prattle on, he looked for a service drone. Hopefully Senator Proteus’ order to keep him fueled would remain valid for the remainder of the night, not just the one cube. He spotted it at the edge of the crowd and lifted his cube, shaking it to signal it’s emptiness. The drone zipped over, taking the old cube and presenting him with a new one before returning attentively to it’s post.

 _“-then_ that we found the greatest evidence _yet_ concerning my theory of mechanimal behavior.” Flatwarp continued, gesturing excitedly. “Which brings me to _these_ lovely things.” he mecha straightened her spinal column, removed the lid from the tray. A few beeps of surprise and revulsion passed through the crowd as she revealed three ground crawlers, plump and wriggling. 

Now _these things_ Gearcut was familiar with. They looked remarkably cleaner than the average crawler he encountered in the Dead End-- the row of spines on each of their sides intact and sharp, their blue biolights bright and pulsing. But there was no mistaking the stout segmented bodies, the frontal intakes surrounded by four mobile denta-- these were the same pests that infested slums and subsisted on scrap, dead mechanimals, and fuel waste.

“-don’t look like much, and in truth they _aren’t_ , yet I’ve trained them to burrow, spawn, and produce fields on command _without_ mnemosurgery or augmentation.” Flatwarp chirped smugly, crossing her arms and grinning. “They respond consistently to orders both verbal and electromagnetic.” She looked up from the worms, a strange light in her optics. “Give me a decade,” she nearly sang, “and I’ll discredit the Ambus Test.”

Gearcut wasn’t sure what she meant by that last line, but it was met with wild applause from the assembled mechen, suggesting it was quite impressive. 

“Would you mind sharing what exercise you have planned for them this cycle?” another senator, Gearcut thought he recognised him as Decimus, asked in a serious voice.

“Well, in short, I intend to demonstrate the effects of my training method by directing the ground crawlers to use the subject as host for their spawn. I have a more professional presentation of my research planned as well, but this is as good a format as any to put them through their paces. It really is _incredible_ how much they’ve learned. The only thing I cannot persuade them to do is spawn in the open, which of course bolsters the theory that they utilize fuel and materials from the host for their growth. it’s possible I could even collect data for my own benefit.” Flatwarp glanced back down at the crawlers, nudging one of them away from where it had strayed to the edge of the tray. 

“It’s been awhile since I’ve offered a live Cybertronian for a host. Though I’ve trained them to spawn in deceased subjects, as a rule, they prefer living mechanimals. This will be a _treat_.” The mecha reached down, scooping one of the worms off of the tray and cradling it close to her thorax, stroking its back with no apparent revulsion. 

“Isn’t it _Spots_? Yes it _is_!” she cooed in a giddy voice. Gearcut briefly glanced at another guard to make sure that other mecha had heard that too. The heavy he made optic contact with shrugged, appearing equally taken aback by the behavior. The guests, while hardly fawning over the pests themselves, did seem to regard it as something which was normal for the mecha in question, as her actions only provoked a few giggles.

“Well, let us stand in the way of scientific progress no longer!” Senator Proteus announced, lifting his cube. The guests responded by toasting in turn, a few letting out whoops of excitement as they moved back to the table where the small orange mecha was still restrained.

Gearcut could hear the doctor’s fans roaring even before moving his way through the crowd to Proteus’ side. Leaving him alone for close to half an hour seemed to have had quite the effect on his composure. He was still straining against his bonds, but his efforts seemed less focused on covering himself and more towards rubbing his heated plating against the table in a desperate bid to build static charge. He wasn’t making much noise-- or at least the noise that he was making couldn’t really be heard over his fans-- but his frame clearly wanted him to. He was biting his lip hard enough to draw fuel, his optics offline and leaking cleaning fluid. Senator Proteus was by his side, watching the display with undisguised excitement. He reached out, swept his hand down the front of Rung’s thorax and laughing as his spark flared visibly in response. He hovered over his abdomen, close enough for his field to press against transformation seams and sensitive biolights even if his servos weren’t. Despite the doctor’s best efforts, a needy whistle escaped his voxcoder, his body straining to expose the gaps in his plating where actuators and mesh could be accessed. Proteus dipped his fingers into one such cavity and Rung let out a lewd moan, bucked his hips sharply upwards. 

Immediately the guests burst into laughter. The mecha’s field flared with a strange polarity which Gearcut couldn’t decipher-- glitched mechen had weird fields, but Gearcut could guess that the emotion the mecha’s spark _meant_ to broadcast was shame-- and he tried to twist away from the touch, but Proteus persisted. He continued rubbing at the delicate mesh until he had gotten a second moan out of the doctor, which itself provoked another laughing fit from the audience.

“Listen to him! It’s like something out of a cheap emulator,” someone called.

“If this was a vid I’d say he was overselling it, you barely touched him,” another mech joked, prompting a smattering of other guests to pipe up with various jeers and comments on the doctor’s performance.

“Look, he’s drooling!” a guest chirped, reaching over and hooking his fingers into the side of the doctor’s mouth, stretching his cheek. Rung twisted his helm. The guest just laughed and pushed his digits further into his intake. “Suck.” Rung gagged, and made a frantic effort to bite the thick fingers. “Come on!” the mecha urged, pushing his fingers in and out of the doctor’s intake. Rung let out what sounded like a sob followed by a muffled whimper, shook his head. “He won’t do it,” the guest huffed.

“Perhaps Flatwarp will be able to train him,” another mecha joked.

“No offense Proteus, but no heat simulator is _that_ good,” someone sneered. “I think our guest is _just that eager_ to see what we have planned for him.” The mecha on the table didn’t seem _that_ enthusiastic to Gearcut, but the high caste mechen were probably exaggerating in an effort to get a reaction out of him. Proteus took his servo away from Rung’s frame, and the doctor let out a distraught beep before managing to offline his voxcoder.

“Well, then it would be rude of me to delay any further, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s been awhile, Subject Fifteen,” Flatwarp chirped as she leaned over the doctor’s prone frame. 

If the mecha hadn’t been restrained, Gearcut expected he would have jumped out of his plating. As it was he merely grunted against his denta, optics sparking, and strained at his bonds until his plating bent. 

“Aw, it responds to its number.” She tilted her helm. “Just like my crawlers do to their names. Speaking of which.” She scooped one of the worms out of the crook of her arm and deposited it gently onto the mecha’s abdomen. She then placed the second one next to the first, and the third one directly over his sparkport. The three crawlers magnetised to the living metal immediately, allowing them to stay put even as Rung writhed.

It seemed to Gearcut like an awful waste, to have a mecha hot and humming and _not_ use him to work off some charge. But the party guests seemed much far interested in the prospect of offering the doctor to the worms than in interfacing with him. Gearcut had heard from other heavies, ones with more experience working events like this, that high caste mechen tended to have _exotic_ tastes. Probably because their lifestyles allowed them to practice standard acts to exhaustion. Regular interfacing wasn’t new or exciting enough to keep their attention: they wanted to lick powdered nucleon off of each other’s arrays, they wanted to inject circuit speeders into their sparks and merge, they wanted to hardline a dying Empty and overload from the sensation of death-by-proxy. They wanted... whatever _this_ was.

“ _Do_ keep struggling Subject Fifteen,” Flatwarp said with genuine enthusiasm, watching the mech’s thrashing with a grin. “A mobile and charged host is much more appealing to their instincts than a prone one, and your systems are far too distracted to mount adequate defenses against parasitic attack.” She reached forward, pressing one hand against the orange mecha’s abdominal plating to keep his back flush to the table and raising her helm to once more address the other guests. “The ground crawlers have been trained not only to burrow _when_ I command it, but also _where_. I’ve found this is quite useful, as it means I can choose a suitable entry point in the host.” 

With her free hand Flatwarp groped at his transformation seams, her face pinched with concentration until she found a gap in plating sufficient for her plans. The mecha seemed to suddenly forget about his fear, he offlined his optics and opened his mouth to let out a series of frantic clicks, straining his bonds in an affort to press up against her hands.

“Flash,” she called, making two quick rasps of her fingers against the spot she had selected. “Burrow.” One of the worms’ biolights flickered and it crawled immediately to the gap, digging it’s denta between the plating and into the sensitive mesh beneath. The mecha’s voxcoder cracked as he broke into a stuttering moan, which became a whistle as the worm flexed its intake to further pry the plating apart and secure its hold on the mesh. The crawler’s biolights pulsed as it rotated it’s frontal segment, the whirr of the motion barely audible beneath the sick skreel of mesh tearing and the doctor’s pained scream. With a sizeable hole now torn into the protective layers of his frame, the worm ducked its foresegment inside and began thrashing in earnest. 

“Right now Flash is looking for a strut to grasp, to help it pull inside the host without doing too much damage to the wet systems,” Flatwarp explained. Apparently finding it, the worm stopped writhing and switched to pulsing, working it’s frame slowly into the wound. The mecha was still screaming, voice hoarse and painted with static, as it’s bulky middle segment passed through his plating and the crawler slithered fully inside. 

“Once one ground crawler has entered the host, the rest of the swarm generally use the same aperture. This is, again, to limit damage to the host. I’ve been able to condition them _against_ this instinct, however.” As Flatwarp spoke her fingers continued to roam the mecha’s frame, and when she found another spot she clicked in triumph. 

“Green,” she called, repeating the tapping motion, this time in the second location. “Burrow.” The second worm obeyed in much the same manner as the first, and Rung’s screams only grew louder as a second wound was opened and invaded. His optics were leaking fluid copiously, fans screaming in a futile effort to counteract the scalding pain and pleasure heating his circuitry. 

Gearcut was used to seeing mechen in pain, but this was an entirely different sort of pain from the type he was used to dishing out. Of course, when he was causing pain it was usually with a specific goal in mind. In this case the goal seemed to be the pain _itself_. 

The second crawler embedded itself fully into his frame, his voice dissolved into binary. Gearcut could see the bulging of plating as the crawlers explored Rung’s abdominal cavity, disrupting mesh and energon lines in search of a suitable crevice to tuck themselves into. Rung kicked out with his left leg hard enough to crack plating, Gearcut wasn’t sure if it was on purpose or if the worms had pinched an actuator. The fuss of the crawlers getting accustomed to their new host dragged on for another five minutes or so, until Rung’s voxcoder was too strained to continue screaming and his frame was too weak to thrash. His plating settled as the worms did, his wounds still trickling energon, which smeared across his plating and stained the iron table bright pink.

“Now that they’re comfortable, I can demonstrate electromagnetically based commands.” Flatwarp groped at the orange mecha, prompting clicks and whimpers when she found the bulges of plating where her subjects had taken up residency. “I assume many of you here are passingly, but not _intimately_ familiar with the reproductive methods of the lower orders,” she continued, resting her servos over the crawlers’ locations. Rung let out a shrill chirp, optics flashing and suddenly intent on the face of the scientist.

“N- no,” he croaked, field roiling in pain. “No no _no_ , don’t-”

Flatwarp ignored him, pressed down on his plating and offlined her optics, expanding her field with a firm pulse and tapping twice with each hand. For a second nothing happened, and then Rung bucked his spine with renewed energy and emitted a warped and distorted beep, optics flashing.

“Now, if someone can be so good as to hold the subject still, I can provide a visual…?” she looked around expectantly, and two of the other heavies moved to the front of the crowd to aid her. One of the mechen grasped Rung’s shoulders-- keeping conspicuously clear of the third worm, who was still clinging to his sparkport and seemed entirely unbothered by all the excitement-- while the other took hold of his hips. Gearcut heard the groan of warping plating as they hunched over the ends of the slab, leveraging their considerable weight to keep the hysterical mecha still. His limbs twitched and his voxcoder let out a desperate croon, but his abdomen was stabilised. 

“Thank you.” Flatwarp reached into a subspace compartment within her thorax, pulling out a small holoscreen projector wired to her frame. She partially transformed the other arm-- kibble shifting over fingers, wires springing from between seams. The device that materialised on her wrist looked a bit like a bulky connector. She rolled the edge of it over the doctor’s plating, coating the metal with a thick substance Gearcut recognised as conductive gel. With her untransformed hand she she fiddled with the settings on her holoscreen projector, optics dim with concentration. After a moment she grinned and activated the screen. The image that she conjured resembled a medic’s resenogram, a high contrast cross section of an abdomen with the details of living machinery rendered in shadows and highlights. The taxonomist reached into the projection, rotating the image and changing its scale and boundary until the pulsing body of her ground crawler came into focus. The parasite was nestled between wires and lines, curled up against a strut. There was a delighted squeal of disgust from the guests as it throbbed, spewing a grey glistening fluid that obscured the back of Rung’s abdominal cavity like a shadow.

“ _No!_ ” the mecha half chirped and half sobbed, horrified optics fixated on the screen. “No, please, no.”

“Like most mechanimals,” Flatwarp began, completely disregarding the mecha’s cries, “ground crawlers are not forged, but rather use their naturally accumulated charge to make small cores of energy, which they supplement with some of their own pseudo-spark energy to form proto-pseudo-sparks, or _eggs_.” Her tone suggesting a clinical detachment out of place with the scene unfolding on the slab before her. She pointed at the hologram, indicating scattered clusters of glowing flecks that floated in the expelled fluid. From the outside it was difficult to see that anything was happening, especially with the doctor’s thrashing being subdued by the other heavies. He did notice that some of the energon pooled on the slab had become diluted, colored by something pale and gritty.

“In addition, they process the materials they consume into a slurry which aids the development of frames around the eggs, their version of _sentio metallico_ , if you will. This substance, referred to as spawn, is a mixture of eggs and regurgitated matter containing minerals and dissolved metals. The pulsing motion you can see here,” she gestured at the image of the worm, which clenched and spewed more fluid into the cavity, “is the ground crawler ejecting spawn through its intake.” The so called _spawn_ was much thicker than energon, more viscous than fluid and stickier than oil. It pooled around the worm’s intake and clung to struts, matting wires together.” Gearcut tilted his helm in interest, scrutinising the demonstration before him with curiosity. He’d never known how worms duplicated-- had never thought about it, in all honesty. 

“They ejaculate spawn into a host, along with a special bile which protects the spawn from the host’s natural defenses.” Rung’s frame twisted in agony, his good leg kicking, or at least trying to kick, at the bond holding it to the slab. “The spawn is deployed in layers, the matter and bile hardening quickly into a crust which acts as a matrix for the eggs. It’s a real marvel of nature, the way it sticks to everything except the ground crawlers themselves, and once set it is nearly impossible to remove without sub-”

“ _ **Get it out!**_ ” Rung’s voice was high and whistling, his voxcoder clearly damaged by the strain he’d put on it, but it was loud enough to disrupt the lecture. Flatwarp looked quite put out, optics narrowed at the doctor. “Get it _out_ , please n- no no _no take it **out** no **no n**_ -!” A guest reached out, his hand coming to rest over Rung’s crest, and cie froze, voxcoder offlining with a click. Gearcut recognised the guest as Senator Decimus. He turned Rung’s face towards himself, his own expression stern and sad.

“You know you can make this stop anytime Rung,” Decimus said. “All you must do is tell us _what_ you've told and _who_ you've told it to.”

Rung cringed, a look of horrible agony flashing momentarily in his optics before he offlined them, set his jaw and shook his head. Decimus exvented, releasing the other mecha’s helm.

“Very well. Remember, Rung, that we offered you mercy.”

“Oh, but Decimus.” Proteus clapped his hand against the back of his fellow senator, a friendly and jocular gesture. “He doesn’t _want_ mercy, not really. _Look_ at him,” Senator Proteus spat, his collected facade flickering as his voice grew cold and sadistic. “Nothing but a filthy mechanimal. If he has a use, it cannot be anything grander than incubating pests. You always did advocate for choice in function, did you not Rung? Well, this is the function you’ve chosen through your actions.” The senator reached his other hand over the doctor’s thorax, trailing fingers up and down the line of biolights embedded in his gardbrace. 

”And, not to be _crude_ ,” he added, voice rasping in a stage whisper, “but you seem to be getting _off_ on this, aren’t you?” Rung bept, venting in deep impotent gulps and turning his face away from Proteus. “Oh yes, you _certainly_ are. You can protest all you want, your frame knows what it wants, what you _deserve_. Your plating is scalding, and you can blame it on the heat program all you like, but we both know you _love_ this.” The senator trailed his fingers from Rung’s biolights to his neck, kneading the thick cording and eliciting a pained moan. “We both know you love being used like the filthy appliance you are, you love playing our toy, you love all this _attention_. You love it so much you’re going to overload, like the _disgusting_ chage sink you are," he growled. Then, perhaps realising his slip in composure, he straightened up and ground his vocaliser.

“I think we’ve offered our guest quite enough _mercy_ tonight,” Proteus announced. “Flatwarp, be so good as to quiet him.”

Rung clenched his dentate even harder, and Gearcut could _see_ the effort he was expending to keep his frame still. It seemed like such a waste of energy. Flatwarp reached forward and seized Rung’s face by the jaw, squeezing. Gearcut doubted he had enough power left to lock his jaw, nevermind the issue of maintaining concentration. His lips parted without much resistance. 

“Spot,” she called to the final worm as she leaned over and tapped Rung's lips with her fingers twice. “Burrow.” The crawler obeyed, moving quickly over Rung’s plating and the scientist’s arm towards it’s goal. It paused for a moment, feeling at the doctor’s mouth with its teeth, before shoving its’ foresegment down his intake. Rung choked and sputtered, trying to force the worm out, but only spurts of oral lubricant, colored pink with energon, dribbled out. The spikes that covered the worm’s back had dug into the mesh, keeping it anchored. It squirmed further down his intake at a slow but steady pace until, with a final wriggle, it slipped all the way past his lips. Flatwarp released Rung’s jaw. He promptly bit down, letting out an agonised hum, then opened his mouth wide and tried desperately to purge the worm. It was useless, the crawler had settled firmly down his intake. Gearcut could see the bulge in his throat. Distressed beeps and a few wheezing exvents escaped, but he was otherwise silence by the obstruction. 

Flatwarp slid two fingers into Rung's throat, feeling for something, and Rung made another frantic wretching motion at the intrusion, which Flatwarp ignored. She removed her fingers, wiped them clean on Rung's shoulder before placing her palm over the bulge in Rung's throat. She stroked the thing, making an affectionate cooing sound interspersed with clicks of praise. Then she expanded her field, sent out another set of twin pulses. Rung tugged at his bonds, trying to kick out, and skreeled shrilly as the action shifted the contents of his already overcrowded abdomen. It looked to Gearcut that the mecha was now swallowing, perhaps trying to force the thing into his tank rather than his throat, without much success. Aside from a few muffled moans, the doctor was muted, and Flawarp reset her voxcoder to resume her lecture.

“See here!” she grinned, gesturing at Rung’s throat. “You can make out the motion of the ground crawler as it ejaculates into the host’s intake. Now, if you’ll return to the far clearer visual of the spawning process here...” She pointed to indicate the hologram of the worm still spawning in his abdominal cavity. It was hard to tell for sure, but Gearcut imagined that it looked smaller. The puddle of spawn around it had certainly grown larger, numerous wires and lines embedded in it. “Each spawning session,” Flatwarp continued, “though it involves hundreds of eggs, will typically produce only a dozen ground crawlers. It is often necessary for several eggs to join together to form a pseudospark. Weaker eggs, or eggs which are positioned less than ideally in the host, will often flicker out or be consumed.” While still glowing, some of the eggs seemed to have dimmed, perhaps covered up by more recent layers of the spawn. It was getting rather crowded, actually, Gearcut could make out a curve where the doctor’s plating bulged unnaturally. It looked painful. The hologram showed fewer cavities, and flickered occasionally.

“The eggs will incubate in the host for two weeks, forming their bodies out of the spawn, before mobilizing to leave the host, typically out of the same wound their progenitors made. Generally, this results in the death of the host, though we’ve been able to keep many subjects alive thanks to our medical team. Given a sufficient supply of hosts, a single ground crawler can create hundreds of duplicates before its frame- excuse me?” Gearcut followed Flatwarp’s gaze towards Senator Proteus, who was off to the side amusing himself by getting tactile with the doctor’s helm. He’d threaded his fingers through the mecha’s antennae, pinching and stroking at the sensitive appendages. “You’re distorting the feed with bursts of charge.” Flatwarp accused, pointing to the flickering holograph. Proteus smiled good naturedly, moved his hands to Rung’s audial disk, tracing the inner rim and provoking a suffocated moan.

“Am I? Well, I think we’ve seen enough already. Any more and we might lose our appetites, and all that high grade would have to go to waste!” his guests joined in his laughter as his hand investigated the underside of Rung’s finials, the base of his neck and the top of his crest. Rung’s optics flickered, his fans whined. Flatwarp pouted, deactivated the hologram begrudgingly.

“Well, I suppose I should go ahead and extract the first two anyway,” she said, transforming her hand back to its root mode and putting away her projector. “You may go.” She tilted her helm at the two heavies, who released the damaged mecha from under their weight. Proteus slid into the space freed up at the head of the slab, focusing both hands on stimulating Rung’s sensory circuits and ampullae. The small twitches of motion the doctor was able to force into his newly unbound abdomen were stiff and accompanied by a painful sounding skreel, as if a portion of his spinal strut had been fused together. Flatwarp leaned over him, inspecting and tapping at the warped plating where the crawlers had made their nests. Apparently satisfied, the taxonomist shoved a few fingers unceremoniously into the closest wound. Rung cringed away from the mecha, made a terrible noise more mechanimal than cybertronian.

“There you are, come on. Right here.” she cooed, removing her fingers and wiping them dismissively on Rung’s leg. As soon as the aperture was clear, the pale wriggling flesh of a ground crawler came into view. They were noticeably smaller, perhaps even half the size as they had been before. The first one wriggled out without much trouble, the second followed shortly-- both of them slick with energon and fluids, their biolights dim and slow. Flatwarp gathered them up in her arms, chirring affectionately.

“ _Good_ Green. _Good_ Flash. _Very_ good, both of you!” It was impossible to tell what, if anything, the worms were feeling based on their faceless foresegments, but they made soft peeping noises that might have indicated joy. Feeling a bit nauseated at the sight, Gearcut turned his attention back to Proteus. 

Their host was still at the head of the table, hands roaming over Rung’s helm. A few other guests had joined in, a crowd of mechen poking at the vulnerable gaps at his joints, tracing the biolights of his gardbrace, plucking at the taut cables of his neck, groping at his sparkport. Gearcut has been too focused on the gore unfolding in front of his optics to notice that the crowd had moved on to more sensual entertainment. This was a bit more in line with what he had expected from this kind of get together. If you ignored the bulge in his throat, the weeping wounds and the smears of energon on the slab, it was almost mundane. The Senator was talking about something in a hushed but excited tone, his hands rubbing coaxingly at delicate seams and sensitive appendages.

Gearcut briefly considered getting in on the fun, but he knew it would be pushing his luck to do anything but watch. 

“Ooo, I think he’s close!” someone jeered from the crowd.

“Almost, I’d say.” Proteus agreed, smile grim and gleeful. He leaned down, spat something into Rung’s audial which Gearcut couldn’t make out. The senator tightened one hand around his throat, pressing down on his cabling and on the worm inside,and reached with the other into his intake, thrusting his fingers in and out until they were coated in oral lubricant. He took the now slick digits out of his mouth, wrapped them around the doctor’s antenna and _yanked_.

Rung’s frame stiffened suddenly, paint scraping off on the slab with the force of his tension. Charge burst in arcs from between his transformation seams, sparks dancing over his plating and licking at the fingers of the guests. Having gotten what they wanted, the crowd burst into jeering laughter and applause, backing away just enough to allow Rung to experience the aftershocks of his overload unobscured. Proteus stroked the mecha’s crest, a mockingly tender gesture, but withdrew when Rung’s intake spasmed with a violent cough.

“Looks like Spots has _also_ purged his charge,” Flatwarp remarked, pushing her way back through the crowd as the final ground crawler began to emerge among the sound of chokes and whimpers. The third worm backed out of Rung’s intake slowly, hindsegment wiggling curiously as it breeched Rung’s lips. Flatwarp jammed her fingers between Rung’s lips and snatched it up right away, perhaps worried Rung might get the idea to bite. She took it away, presumably placing it with the others. The doctor vented raggedly once his mouth had been cleared, the cables of his throat spasming and weeping energon as he heaved. His intake lurched, reflexively trying to purge his polluted tanks, but Proteus closed his hand over his mouth, holding his jaw closed with a reproachful click. Rung exvented sharply, sending a dribble of half processed energon and spawn out his nostrils, the soupy, acrid fluid speckled with the worm's pale glowing eggs. His optics were wild, terrified and desperate.

“Swallow” Proteus ordered. Rung shook his helm, desperately trying to free it from the senator's grip, to no avail. The senator slammed his head back against the table and repeated his demand. The mecha's optics, sparking with excess cleaning fluid, flickered, and he let out a drowned sob. Reluctantly, he swallowed the fuel he had purged into the forefront of his intake, plating rattling with repulsion. “It would seem you are correct Flatwarp.” Proteus chuckled. “Lesser beings _can_ be trained.” 

He released Rung’s face, making a show of wiping his hands on the surface of his slab in disgust. Once clean of oral lubricant and fuel, he strode to the side of the slab and reached over Rung’s thorax, ripping the magnetic device and data drive from Rung’s thorax. “Get this _thing_ off of my table,” he growled, straightening up and backing away. Several guards moved in to obey, unfastening his bindings. Once he was freed Gearcut’s boss took the honors of shoving the small mecha off the edge of the slab. Rung hit the floor with a painful thud and curled up weakly on his side, whimpering and sobbing, vocaliser choked with lubricant. Fuel and spawn leaked from his wounds and his intake. Proteus shook his head, gazing down at the frame cringing at his pedes.

“Rung of the Pious Pools,” he announced, smiling as the doctor flinched even more. “You are under arrest for conspiracy, treason, and public indecency. Do you have anything to say in your defense?” he paused, entirely for show. There was no way Rung’s vocaliser could still be functioning after the worm had ripped his intake apart. “In light of the overwhelming evidence, along with your previous convictions and unrepentant attitude, I motion to waive right to trial.”

“Seconded,” came a voice from the crowd, presumably another Senator.

“The motion carries,” Decimus added. Proteus’ field radiated satisfaction.

“By the power instilled in me by Adaptus, the Senate, and the cybertronian race, I hereby strip you of your designation and property and sentence you to twenty-five-thousand years imprisonment.” He glanced up at Gearcut’s boss. "Take him down to the nearest Institute for reprocessing. Tell Lobe... tell Lobe to make sure he _remembers_ this. Make sure this is one memory he can't _ever_ remove from his databanks."

“Yes, Sir.” The heavy bowed respectfully before yanking Rung to his pedes. When the mecha’s knees buckled, he pulled him back up by the antenna and held him there by the shoulder.

“Good.” Proteus exvented, then grinned, clapping his hand together. “Who’s in the mood for a holovid?”

The crowd cheered.


End file.
